


Phase Two

by Luces



Category: South Park
Genre: Anxiety, Comedy, Digital Art, Established Relationship, Family Member Death, Financial stability as a kink, Gnomes, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Tweek owns Tweak Bros Coffee, Underpants Gnomes reference, Wakes & Funerals, Writer/Artist Collab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29217981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luces/pseuds/Luces
Summary: Tweek's grandmother passes away and leaves something for him in her will—her five stone gnome statues that he always stared at when he was a child. Tweek attempts to get rid of the gnome statues to varying degrees of success, putting his grip on reality into question in the process.It's a comedy, I swear.Featuring art by Razzi
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: jan 2021 - sp creek server does gnomes





	Phase Two

**Author's Note:**

> Written in collaboration with artist Razzi (https://razzl-0.tumblr.com/) for the 18+ Creek Discord Server's January event of Gnomes/Writer-Artist Collabs.

For a room that was supposedly designed to be comforting, Tweek was having one hell of a time trying to feel comfortable. The yellow walls reminded him of a smoker’s teeth, or a coffee ring left on his pristine white countertops. Either way, it left him feeling anxious, not at ease. The carpeting wasn’t much better. The many crisscrossing lines and dots scattered throughout made for a dizzying pattern. He couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds before his senses were overloaded. There was only one other place Tweek could look, and it was the worst of all:

Nana Tweak, staring right back at him.

Rather, it was a body that _looked_ like Nana Tweak. It wasn’t _really_ her. It hadn’t been her since 5:42 AM last Thursday. Everything that had made her _her_ was gone. Her laugh, her smile, her keen ability to tear her son a new asshole when he was being a shitty father to her grandson—all these things exited her body as she took her last breath. This body lying in front of him, this body encased in taffeta and steel, was a mere shadow painted up to look something like Nana Tweak. She never wore that much make-up, for starters. What kind of photo did his parents give this funeral home anyway?

“Hey, babe.” Craig approached Tweek from the side and wrapped an arm around his waist. “How’re you doing?”

Tweek made a nondescript noise of indifference.

“Big help there, babe.” Craig tried his best to keep his chuckle quiet and respectable while standing next to a dead body. “Let me rephrase that. Are you feeling okay?”

Tweek sighed. “I’m not sure. Like, I knew that Nana had been really sick and suffering for a while, so I know it was for the best, but…”

Tweek’s voice caught in his throat. The emotions were starting to creep up, and Tweek really didn’t want to make a scene. Craig gently squeezed his hand against Tweek’s waist. Tweek placed his hand over Craig’s and threaded their fingers together.

“...but it still hurts to know I’ll never be able to talk to her again, you know?”

“I know,” Craig softly repeated.

“She always made the best waffles,” said Tweek. “Fuck, if I could only eat those waffles again, just one more time.”

“Did she even give you the recipe? We could make them tomorrow morning,” suggested Craig.

“Nah. She always said she’d take that recipe to her grave. I never realized she was being literal.”

Tweek cracked a small smile for the first time that day. He gave Craig’s hand a squeeze.

“Do you need more time?” asked Craig.

Tweek pursed his lips for a moment. “No. No, I think I’m good. But I hope you’re prepared for more Nana stories on the ride home.”

Tweek leaned down and kissed the shadow of his grandmother on the forehead.

“Goodbye, Nana.”

* * *

The funeral and burial ceremony went off without any problems and life went back to normal. The hurt from the grieving process was still there, but as time went by, it became easier to think about her without ending up curled under blankets in bed. It helped that Craig was around to talk when Tweek needed it.

It had been about a month since the funeral when Craig walked into the house with a large manila envelope under his arm.

“What’s that all about?” asked Tweek, looking up from his afternoon cup of coffee.

Craig dropped the large envelope and the rest of the mail onto the kitchen table. “It’s for you,” he said. “And it’s from a law office.”

“ _Ngh—_ really?” He reluctantly reached for the envelope. “I wonder why… I didn’t do anything illegal...I think. Oh my god, am I being served? There was that woman who said she lightly burned her tongue on her latte last week. Is she suing me? Am I being sued? What are we going to do, Craig? I can’t be sued! We’regoingtolosethehouseandourcarand _everything!”_

“Tweek! Calm the fuck down, babe!” Craig placed his hands on Tweek’s shoulders and rubbed them. “I highly doubt it’s _that_ , but if it is, we’ll figure it out. You know what to do when your anxiety spirals out.”

“Right...you’re right…” Tweek mumbled.

He took a deep breath, held it for three seconds, and slowly let it out. A few more reps and he felt much better. With a final sigh, he opened up the letter. Tweek pulled out a small stack of white legal sized paper. He quickly skimmed the cover page.

“So what is it?” asked Craig.

“Looks like it’s about Nana. I think—” Tweek squinted his eyes and put his face closer to the paper for a moment. “I think it’s saying that she might have left me something in her will?”

“Did you know your grandmother had a will?”

“Nope. I didn’t think she had enough assets to warrant one.” Tweek continued reading the letter. “It says that I’ll be receiving the items that she left in my name by the end of the week.”

Craig nodded absentmindedly. He was already thinking about all the cool things that could be showing up at their door in a week.

“What do you think she might have left you?” he asked.

Tweek furrowed his brow. “I have no idea—the letter doesn’t say.”

He paused a moment as a sly smile slowly curled onto his lips.

“It’d be really nice if it was some motherfucking money.”

“Slow down there, babe. You’re no Butters Stotch,” Craig laughed. “But for real though, we could seriously use some real motherfucking money.”

“Maybe we could pay off our student loans once and for all.”

“You know you can’t say things like that, Tweek. I get so hot and bothered by the idea of financial freedom that I already have a half chub over here. You laugh, but I’m dead serious!”

Tweek wiped away the tears from his eyes and caught his breath. “It would also be super cool if she left me her house in Aspen. I always loved spending the holidays up there in the—Craig, why are you taking your pants off?”

“You teased me by talking about wild sexy fantasies like financial freedom and homeownership, and now I’m hard as a rock. Put down the letter and take your pants off, cause we’re gonna fuck.”

* * *

Tweek bit his nails. More specifically, he _used_ to bite his nails compulsively as a teen, but since then he had learned how to control it better. Nowadays, he only bit his nails when he was scared. Right now, Tweek was scared. Right now, Tweek was biting his nails.

Tweek stood in the kitchen, staring at a large cardboard box sitting on the kitchen table. He had signed for it and accepted it into his apartment, but the moment the door closed behind him, he had instantly regretted it. His mind raced with all of the possibilities that could be in the box. Sure, the shipping label has the same address as the law office that sent him the letter last week, but it could all be some elaborate prank.

Tweek gnawed at his pinky fingernail until he felt a sharp pain and tasted blood on his tongue. He looked down at his bloody fingernail and sighed.

Craig opened the door and came in from outside, dropping his coat onto one of the kitchen chairs. He spied the cardboard box on the table, but Tweek was nowhere in sight.

“Babe?” he called out. “You home?”

“I’m in the bathroom,” he heard Tweek yell from down the hall.

“Is this large box on the table the one from your grandmother’s will?”

“I’m ninety-five percent sure that it is,” said Tweek as he came back down the hall into the kitchen.

Craig eyed the bandage around Tweek’s right pinky finger. “You’ve been biting again.” Craig scrunched his face in disappointment.

“You weren’t here to stop me. You know how I get when I’m scared. It’s not that bad.”

“So what’s in it?” asked Craig.

“I dunno.”

“You haven’t opened it yet?”

“Uh, no! I was fucking scared, dude!” Tweek held up his pinky finger and pointed to it with his other hand.

“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but I’m morbidly curious now. What did you think might be in there?

Tweek’s eyes became saucers. “ _Anything_ could be in there! A severed hand! A black mamba, like in Kill Bill! Or fuck, what if a Goliath Birdeating spider was in there and it jumped out at me and latched onto my face!”

Tweek’s chest was heaving, his breathing coming out fast and shallow.

“Fuck, I knew that was a bad idea. Come here, babe,” said Craig.

He pulled Tweek into his arms and rubbed his back.

“The contents of this box are from your grandmother. Nana Tweek specifically put whatever is in there into her will so that you could have it. Why would she even have had snakes or spiders in the first place? And why would she want to give them to you, her only grandson?”

Tweek inhales as he opens his mouth to reply. Craig cuts him off.

“And no, she didn’t secretly hate you. That’s your anxiety talking.”

Tweek breathed in time with the long, slow strokes of Craig’s hands on his back. He rested his face in the crook of Craig’s neck until he felt normal again.

“Thanks,” he mumbled into Craig’s neck.

He sighed and pulled away from Craig. “I guess we do have to open it, though. Now that you’re here, I know it will be okay.”

“Aww babe. You know I’ll always protect you,” Craig smiled.

“I know,” said Tweek. “That’s why I’m going to stand behind you when you open it so that if there _is_ a Goliath Birdeating spider in there, it latches onto your face and not mine.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Craig flatly.

Tweek handed Craig a pair of scissors—grabbing a paring knife for himself, just in case he had to fight off any poisonous creatures—and stood back while Craig tore open the packaging tape. Craig popped open the flaps and opened the box. He pulled out a fairly weighty figure surrounded by bubble wrap. There were four more similar figures. Tweek joined Craig in unwrapping the figures and placing them on the table. 

“Oh no…” said Tweek.

Five stone gnome figures stood in front of him. They were various heights, with the shortest being about a foot tall and the tallest being one head taller than the shortest. They looked innocent enough, but Tweek didn’t seem to agree.

“What?” asked Craig. “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with them?”

“These...these are the gnomes that tormented me as a child. My Nana had these statues my whole life, and she kept them on the fireplace mantle. They scared the shit out of me as a kid. Like seriously.”

Tweek held the paring knife out, pointing the tip directly at the gnome statues.

“I would always stare at them whenever I was over her house. It felt like I was being watched whenever I wasn’t looking directly at them. I had a constant gnawing feeling in my gut that they were going to try to hurt me or do something mean when I wasn’t looking. So I always looked. So they could never complete their sick plans.”

Tweek dropped his arm to his side, the knife still held loosely between his fingers.

“I know it’s stupid—a ridiculous fantastical thought from an untreated anxious and paranoid child. My Nana always thought that it was cute how I stared at them. She must’ve thought that I _liked_ the gnomes, and that _that_ was why I was staring at them.”

“And so she left them to you in her will,” said Craig.

“And so she left them to me in her will,” Tweek repeated.

Craig took a deep breath, letting it out in a quick huff. “Any idea of what to do with them? They are kinda of ugly.” He picked up the smallest one and took a closer look at its facial details. “I have no clue where we’d even put them. The garden, maybe? I mean, you know, if we _had_ a garden.”

“Oh, fuck no. We are _not_ keeping these. I’m still not convinced that there isn’t anything off about them. I am getting rid of them tomorrow.”

* * *

Tweek was on the phone with Clyde as soon as he knew the dump was open. Clyde had a reliable truck for work, that truck had a beautiful shiny dump sticker on the window, and Clyde owed Tweek a favor after he stood in line to buy Lady Gaga tickets for him that he was too afraid to buy himself. Clyde was reluctant because it was “the ass crack of dawn”, as he so eloquently put it, but he eventually agreed.

The drive to the South Park dump took about twenty minutes. The ride was mostly quiet until Clyde decided to ask why Tweek needed to do a dump run.

“I need to get rid of...some things,” said Tweek.

“What kind of…things?” asked Clyde.

“Things that should never been seen or spoken of.”

Clyde swallowed hard. “Are those things in that cardboard box that you put in the back of my truck?”

Tweek slowly turned to look at Clyde. “Why are you asking so many questions, Clyde?”

Clyde gripped his steering wheel. “No reason,” he nervously laughed. “Just making small talk.”

Tweek turned back and looked wistfully out the passenger window. “I had to get rid of them somehow. I had to take them out. And take them out I did.”

Clyde pulled into the dump entrance and drove around until they reached the household waste area. He put the truck in park and waited until Tweek had exited the vehicle before he fumbled his phone out of his pocket. He couldn’t text Craig fast enough.

_Dude! I think Tweek is a fucking murderer! If he kills me next, I’m going to haunt the shit out of both of you!_

Tweek lifted the box of gnome statues out of the back of Clyde’s truck. He unceremoniously dropped it next to a broken washing machine and a wooden bureau with missing drawers.

“Good riddance,” he said, kicking some dirt at the box. “You can never haunt me again, you damn gnomes.”

He opened the door to Clyde’s truck, scaring his friend half to death.

“The deed is done, Clyde,” said Tweek, perfectly calm.

“O-okay then!” Clyde’s hand shook as he turned the ignition.

Tweek turned his head to gaze out the passenger window. He smiled as he watched Clyde’s reflection. It was fun to fuck with him sometimes.

* * *

_“What the fuck?!”_

Craig jumped out of bed and raced through the house to find Tweek. He could tell the difference in Tweek’s screams based on the pitch, and this one meant serious business. He burst into the kitchen to find Tweek only in his pajama pants, pointing and shaking in what could only be described as fear and anger. Fanger, if you will. 

“Tweek? What’s wrong?!”

“ _THAT’S what’s fucking wrong, Craig!”_

Craig moved around to Tweek’s side to find the five gnome statues sitting on the kitchen table.

“The gnomes?” he asked.

“ _YES, CRAIG! THE FUCKING GNOMES! I brought them to the dump yesterday morning while you were at work!”_

Craig pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “Babe...You know I don’t like to use this word lightly, but...I think you might just be paranoid about this—”

Craig put up his hands in defense as Tweek snapped his head towards him and shot him a look of warning.

“Hey, look, I’m just saying that you have a lot of childhood memories of these gnomes freaking you out, it makes a lot more sense that you just forgot to drop them off at the dump than the statues somehow walking themselves and the box back to our house.”

“Craig. I know what I fucking did yesterday. And if you don’t believe me, then believe Clyde! He’s the one who drove me while you had the car!”

“Yeah, all Clyde says is that he thinks you’re a murderer. I don’t really know what that’s about,” said Craig.

“I was messing with him while he was bringing me to the dump to get rid of those _fucking gnomes!”_

Craig sighed. “I know you’re feeling scared right now, but you’re also making me scared. Let’s take a breather for a moment. Let’s go back to bed and relax. In a little bit, I’ll make you some breakfast. I can put the stupid statues in the closet so you can’t see them.”

Tweek crossed his arms and glanced at the gnome statues again. They were enjoying this—he could tell. He bit his bottom lip hard and nodded before following Craig back to their bedroom.

He had to figure out what to do next.

* * *

On Tweek’s next day off from work, he tried again. He put the stone statues into a large wooden crate he had bought just for this occasion, and clicked the heavy steel lock into place. Once the crate was loaded into the back of the car he and Craig shared, he went upstairs to shake Craig awake.

“Holy shit! Tweek! What’s the matter?!” Craig gasped, waking with a shock.

“Get dressed, you’re coming with me,” said Tweek.

Craig stared at him, dumbfounded. “I...I don’t understand.”

“I have the gnomes loaded into the car and I’m going to get rid of them.”

“Okay...so why do I need to come along?”

“So you can be witness to me actually getting rid of them, since you don’t believe me,” said Tweek.

“Babe, I don’t want to get into that again…” Craig sighed, rubbing his hand over his tired face.

“Then come with me.”

The nearly four hour drive from South Park to Gypsum was devoid of any road trip excitement. Craig slept for the first half, still exhausted from being woken up early, and Tweek was too focused on his goal to participate in any pleasant conversation. As they reached their destination, Craig finally asked the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since he woke up.

“So...why did we drive all the way to Gypsum?”

“Eagle River,” said Tweek.

“What about it?”

“It goes through Gypsum. It’s an easy way to reach it.”

“And why do you need to reach the Eagle River, darling love of my life?” Craig pursed his lips, somewhat nervous about the answer.

“It flows into the Colorado River which flows southwest, far _far_ away from here. The gnomes can’t escape a heavy locked crate floating down a large river. It’s foolproof.”

Tweek pulled into a parking lot that connected to a pathway following the river. Craig watched as he put the car in park, got out and retrieved the crate from the back. Tweek lugged the crate all the way down to the edge and pushed it into the water. The crate managed to float, despite the weight, and Tweek watched as it slowly made its way to the center of the river. He watched it until it was out of sight, just to make sure it couldn’t follow him home.

The next morning, there was no sign of the statues. Despite this, Tweek was on high alert the entire day. By the second day, he had relaxed a little.

“See, Tweek? Your imagination was just getting ahead of you,” said Craig.

Tweek was still on edge, but maybe Craig was right.

Three days after the trip to Gypsum, Craig kissed Tweek good morning on his forehead.

“Hey babe, how about I go make us pancakes for breakfast?” he asked.

“Mmm...that would be wonderful,” Tweek said as he burrowed deeper under the blankets.

Craig got out of bed, dressed, and went out into the kitchen.

Five stone gnome statues stood defiantly on the kitchen table.

Craig was speechless. He was only capable of partial words that disintegrated into confused grunts and whines. After a few minutes, he managed to say one word.

“Tweek!” he squeaked out.

A moment later, Tweek wandered down the hallway, still naked from bed.

“What is it? I thought you were making panca—”

Tweek’s lips curled into a snarl. He knew it. Those fucking gnomes were _cursed_ . He wanted to rub it in Craig’s face that he was fucking right and _not_ “just paranoid”, but Craig looked like he was having trouble processing the entire scenario.

“I am so fucking pissed off, you have no fucking idea,” said Tweek in a voice so calm and quiet that it sent a chill down Craig’s spine.

This ended today.

* * *

Kenny stood at the counter, flipping through a vintage issue of Playboy. It was a pretty slow day at the hardware store, and he had already finished all of his stocking chores. He sighed, wishing that it was either five o’clock or that something interesting would happen to shake up the afternoon doldrums.

Tweek burst into the store like a tornado. Kenny’s heart caught in his throat as the door slammed open and shut. Once he collected himself, he shot a smile towards the blond cyclone.

“Hey, Tweek! How’s it going, man?”

Tweek stopped in his tracks in front of the counter. He slowly turned his head toward Kenny and stared at him with the mad eyes of a desperate man at the end of his rope.

“Where do you keep the sledge hammers?” Tweek said in a voice barely above a whisper.

Kenny stared right back—his eyes widened with concern. He silently blinked a few times before he replied.

“Aisle seven, my dude.”

Kenny didn’t dare ask any more questions.

Tweek drove home with the sledge hammer, playing the scenario over and over in his head. He wanted to make sure he knew his plan inside and out. They had moved the gnome statues into the living room that morning so that they kitchen table would be clear for breakfast. It was as simple as going into the living room and smashing the statues into dust.

He walked into the house unannounced, sledge hammer resting against his shoulder, and passed by Craig. Craig was still sitting at the kitchen table, slowly sipping his coffee and working on the day’s crossword puzzle.

“Hey, honey,” he said, paying half attention.

When he didn’t get a response from Tweek, he glanced up and caught a quick glimpse at Tweek and the sledgehammer before they disappeared into the living room.

“Oh shit!” he said as he scrambled out of his chair.

Tweek stopped in front of the statues and planted his feet shoulder width apart. He dropped the sledge hammer off of his shoulder and rested it on the floor in front of him.

“You motherfuckers think you’ve won, haven’t you? I know you’re laughing at me. Well, who the fuck is laughing now, _bitch?!”_

He raised the sledge hammer to strike down on the first gnome when Craig burst into the living room.

“Honey! Tweek! What the fuck are you doing?!” Craig grabbed the head of the hammer in his hands right before Tweek was going to swing.

Tweek turned to face Craig, shooting him a look that was so full of heat that it could melt steel. “This ends now, Craig! I am _not_ going to be cursed for the rest of my life by these hellspawn fucking gnomes!”

Craig looked at the gnomes—the same gnomes that somehow managed to get out of a wooden crate and swim to the riverbank, then apparently hitch a ride back to their house, despite not having money or even being fucking alive. They were definitely some sort of cursed bullshit. This _was_ South Park after all.

“Well...dammit Tweek, at least take them outside before you go swinging that hammer around, please? I’d really rather you not destroy our house in the process of your revenge.”

“Fine.”

Tweek dropped the sledgehammer to the floor and bent down to pick up the nearest statue. He carried it over to the closest window, opened it up, and chucked the gnome out onto the grass.

Craig watched, speechless, as his partner moved back and forth in front of him, taking each stone statue and throwing it out the window. To his shock, Tweek climbed out the window after he tossed out the final one.

“Jesus Christ…” Craig groaned. He returned to the kitchen to put on his sneakers, then ran out of the house.

When Craig ran around the corner of the house, he saw the gnome statues lined up once again. Tweek was in the same position that he was in the house—legs spread shoulder width apart and his knees slightly bent in a strong power stance. Tweek lifted the sledgehammer with both arms, holding it over his right shoulder. He let out a loud, primal yell of rage and swung the hammer down onto the first statue. The head of the hammer met the stone with a smash as the statue broke apart into pieces and a puff of dust. Two, three, four, five—he continued until all of the statues were rendered to chunks of stone and dust.

There sure seemed to be a lot of that dust, though. So much that it almost felt like a cloud of dust was covering the remains of the statues, and only getting bigger. Tweek and Craig coughed as the dust cloud passed around them, slowly dispersing away. When they opened their eyes, the chunks of stone were gone.

There standing in front of them were five living gnomes.

“GAH! I knew it! I knew they were going to try to fucking kill me!” Tweek screamed as he picked up his sledgehammer once more and got into a ready position.

“What are you, a fucking idiot?” said the shortest gnome. “We’re not going to kill you, dumbass. We want to thank you.”

“ _WHAT?”_ Tweek shrieked. “Thank me?”

“You freed us,” said another gnome. “For decades, we have been prisoners, stuck in those hard cases, unable to figure a way out.”

“How the hell did that happen?” asked Tweek.

“We went out drinking one night, got too shitfaced, and we all ended up falling into a vat of concrete. Life’s a bitch, huh?”

“So…” Craig chimed in. “Does Tweek get three wishes or something for saving you?”

“No, dickface! We’re not magical like a fucking genie!” The tallest gnome stepped forward and kicked Craig in the shin. “We’re just gnomes. Regular gnomes. We’re about one thing and one thing only—business.”

Tweek’s eyes glazed over as a flash of a childhood memory he had long buried came rushing back. He picked up the sledgehammer and got it into a ready position.

“You stay the fuck away from my underpants!” he yelled.

“Underpants? Are you high?” the gnomes asked. “We don’t give a fuck about underpants. Those assholes are idiots.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tweek.

One of the gnomes sighed and hit his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Look, not all gnomes are the same, dumbass. Yeah yeah, we’re all distantly related on an ancestral business level and shit, but every village is different, right? And every gnome village has a different product that they shill.”

The shortest gnome chimed in. “The underpants gnomes live near our village and they’re dicks. They think they’re _so smart_ stealing underpants and reselling them. Like...who wants to buy someone’s old stretched out and skidmarked underpants? That’s fucking gross!”

“I fucking hate the underpants gnomes, too,” said Tweek. “They tormented me as a kid, stealing all of my underpants right in front of me—and no one believed me. No one believed me!”

Tweek tossed the sledgehammer onto the ground and lowered himself down to sit on the grass. One of the gnomes walked up next to his leg and put their small hand on his knee.

“Gnome-human solidarity, bro,” they said.

Craig scratched his chin in thought. “So...if you don’t steal and sell underpants...what _do_ you sell?”

All five gnomes smiled and spoke in unison. “Easy listening compilation CDs!”

“We sneak into old people’s houses and steal their shitty old CDs,” one gnome explained. “Sometimes we _really_ hit the jackpot and come across discarded boxes stuffed with brand new Starbucks compilation CDs. ‘Member when they used to sell shit like that? Yeah, they stopped doing that, so now they’re just ripe for the taking.”

“That’s Phase One! Then Phase Three is profit, as usual!”

“Yeah, okay. That makes sense, I guess. But what about Phase Two?” asked Craig.

“Yeah, about that,” said the tallest gnome. “We have no idea what Phase Two is. That’s why we’ve been struggling in business. We have all this product and no way to profit off of it.”

Tweek had been very quiet since he had sat down. He took a deep breath, then spoke softly. “I think I’m Phase Two.”

“Babe?” asked Craig.

“I could start selling the CDs at Tweek Bros.”

Craig looked skeptical.

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, Craig, but listen,” Tweek explained. “Park County is about ten years behind the rest of the world in terms of technology and pop culture, right? Most of the customers we get probably won’t realize that Starbucks doesn’t sell CDs anymore and that no one buys CDs any more, period. Our customers are idiots and will believe almost anything.”

“You don’t think people around here know about streaming? It’s not like it just became a thing,” said Craig.

“Maybe...maybe I could call them streaming discs? SDs? I could try to tap into the population’s general sense of wanting to be hip and current by telling them that these CDs are what allow you to stream content.”

Tweek turned back to the gnomes. “Would you guys want to go into business with me at my family’s coffee shop?”

The gnomes huddled up together, debating with each other in hushed tones. After a few moments, they broke their huddle and faced Tweek once more.

The tallest gnome stepped forward. “We agree, on the condition that we split the profits straight down the middle.”

“I can totally deal with that,” said Tweek.

The gnome walked up to Tweek and held out his hand. Tweek stuck out his index finger and they shook. “Deal!”

* * *

_Three Months Later..._

* * *

“Hi, welcome to Tweek Bros Coffee! What may I get for you today?”

Tweek dusted off his green apron and leaned against the countertop.

“Hi, I’m just going to have a large black coffee, young man,” said the older customer. “On second thought, I’ll live a little. How about you add in one of those pink sugars?”

“Okay, coming right up!” said Tweek.

The older customer looked around the shop while Tweek worked on his order. They noticed the small display of CDs at the end of the counter and cocked their head to the side.

“Streaming CDs, huh? You know I think I heard my granddaughter talking about that the other day. That and something about clocks she likes to watch on her phone. I guess this must be the new technology.”

They scanned through the selection looking for something that caught their eye.

“Ooh! Michael Bublé! I love him!”

They picked up the CD and took a closer look.

“Hmm. This album looks awfully familiar. Guess it’s just a case of déjà vu!” The customer laughed as they placed the CD on the counter and pulled out their wallet.

Tweek placed their coffee down next to the CD and took the cash from their hand. As he rang up their order, he glanced down at the floor behind the counter and winked.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this story! If you enjoyed it, please take the time to leave a kudos or a comment!
> 
> Social media: @otherluces on Tumblr and Twitter; Luces#5969 on Discord


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